About:The Great­est Gen­er­a­tion by Tom Brokaw is a non-fiction book which the author col­lects sto­ries from indi­vid­ual Amer­i­cans of the gen­er­a­tion. These are not his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, but every­day peo­ple who were called on to do noth­ing less than save the world.

Thoughts:The Great­est Gen­er­a­tion by Tom Brokaw is truly a remark­able book, I ran through it like a steam train, and could not put it down. This is a mov­ing book that teaches lessons rep­re­sented through those who lived dur­ing the great depres­sion and fought, what many call, the last jus­ti­fied war.

These sto­ries makes you appre­ci­ate where you came from, and what peo­ple have done to pre­serve our way of life. The most fas­ci­nat­ing parts are not the sto­ries of the men and women who went on to big­ger and bet­ter things, but the sto­ries of those who came home, set­tled down, and lived a full life.

The peo­ple Mr. Brokaw writes about are not cut­board cutouts of sol­diers who are duty bound, respon­si­ble con­ser­v­a­tives or any other stereo­type, real or imag­ined. These were real peo­ple, who cared about them­selves and oth­ers and who had fam­i­lies care about them a well.

The legacy of the great­est gen­er­a­tion is that they built a soci­ety which is too easy. Every­thing comes easy and every­one demands suc­cess and riches. If you can’t have it from work­ing, you just make a fool of your­self on national TV and watch the dol­lars stream in. That gen­er­a­tion did not feel enti­tled to any­thing, they didn’t feel priv­i­leged or wanted to live on some­one else’s expense account. Come to think of it, I can­not think of a sin­gle per­son com­plain­ing through­out this book.

This is not a his­tory book of WWII, but it does give you a great appre­ci­a­tion for the men and women of that gen­er­a­tion. Ordi­nary peo­ple doing extra­or­di­nary things could very well describe this book, but I’m afraid that might be an understatement.